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Talanoa: Contemporary Pacific Literature

Alan Duff
Once Were Warriors (1994, out of print); One Night Out Stealing (1995)

Patricia Grace
Dogside Story (2002); Baby No-Eyes (1999); Cousins (1998); Potiki (1995)

Epeli Hau’ofa
Kisses in the Nederends (1995); Tales of the Tikongs (1994)

Witi Ihimaera
The Uncle’s Story: A Novel (2002)

John Kneubuhl
Think of a Garden and Other Plays (1997)

Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl
Hawai‘i Nei: Island Plays (2002)

Haunani-Kay Trask
Night is a Sharkskin Drum (2002)

Hone Tuwhare
Deep River Talk: Collected Poems (1994, out of print)

Albert Wendt
Sons for the Return Home (1996); Leaves of the Banyan Tree (1994)
Nuanua: Pacific Writing in English since 1980 (1995)

Wayne Kaumualii Westlake
Westlake: Poems by Wayne Kaumualii Westlake (1947-1984) (2009)

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Available now! DEFAMILIARIZING JAPAN’S ASIA-PACIFIC WAR, find it here: https://buff.ly/33oeqzz⠀ ⠀ This wide-ranging collection seeks to reassess conventional understanding of Japan’s Asia-Pacific War by defamiliarizing and expanding the rhetorical narrative. Its nine chapters, diverse in theme and method, are united in their goal to recover a measured historicity about the conflict by either introducing new areas of knowledge or reinterpreting existing ones. Collectively, they cast doubt on the war as familiar and recognizable, compelling readers to view it with fresh eyes.⠀ Following an introduction that problematizes timeworn narratives about a “unified Japan” and its “illegal war” or “race war,” early chapters on the destruction of Japan’s diplomatic records and government interest in an egalitarian health care policy before, during, and after the war oblige us to question selective histories and moral judgments about wartime Japan. The discussion then turns to artistic/cultural production and self-determination, specifically to Osaka rakugo performers who used comedy to contend with state oppression and to the role of women in creating care packages for soldiers abroad. Other chapters cast doubt on well-trod stereotypes (Japan’s lack of pragmatism in its diplomatic relations with neutral nations and its irrational and fatalistic military leadership) and examine resistance to the war by a prominent Japanese Christian intellectual. The volume concludes with two nuanced responses to race in wartime Japan, one maintaining the importance of racial categories while recognizing the “performance of Japaneseness,” the other observing that communities often reflected official government policies through nationality rather than race. Contrasting findings like these underscore the need to ask new questions and fill old gaps in our understanding of a historical event that, after more than seventy years, remains as provocative and divisive as ever.

Available now! COSMOLOGY AND LOGIC IN THE DAO OF CHANGES, find it here: https://buff.ly/2JWKgvA⠀ ⠀ The Book of Changes (Yijing, also known as I Ching) is generally recognized as the oldest among the ancient Chinese classics, tracing back to the yin-yang symbolic system that, according to traditional mythology, was created by the legendary Fu Xi (mid-29th century BCE). The Yijing's mystical origins and the dynamic nature of its image-numbers—the various diagrams, trigrams, and hexagrams—gave rise to subsequent interpretations by sages over millennia, along with differences in understanding. Ever since the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), there have been debates between two schools of thought: the image-number school, which focuses on the symbols as a means to divination; and the philosophy school, which values the work for its cosmological and ontological insights. Assimilating ideas from both schools, Ma Baoshan reestablishes the logical image-number system and reaffirms that this image-number logic is the foundation for understanding the Book of Changes in the context of contemporary research.

Available now! RECLAIMING KALĀKAUA: NINETEENTH-CENTURY PERSPECTIVES ON A HAWAIIAN SOVEREIGN, find it here: https://buff.ly/2NozD6X⠀ ⠀ Reclaiming Kalākaua: Nineteenth-Century Perspectives on a Hawaiian Sovereign examines the American, international, and Hawaiian representations of David La‘amea Kamananakapu Mahinulani Nalaiaehuokalani Lumialani Kalākaua in English- and Hawaiian-language newspapers, books, travelogues, and other materials published during his reign as Hawai‘i’s mō‘ī (sovereign) from 1874 to 1891. Beginning with an overview of Kalākaua’s literary genealogy of misrepresentation, Tiffany Lani Ing surveys the negative, even slanderous, portraits of him that have been inherited from his enemies, who first sought to curtail his authority as mō‘ī through such acts as the 1887 Bayonet Constitution and who later tried to justify their parts in overthrowing the Hawaiian kingdom in 1893 and annexing it to the United States in 1898.⠀ A close study of contemporary international and American newspaper accounts and other narratives about Kalākaua, many highly favorable, results in a more nuanced and wide-ranging characterization of the mō‘ī as a public figure. Most importantly, virtually none of the existing nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first-century texts about Kalākaua consults contemporary Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) sentiment for him. Offering examples drawn from hundreds of nineteenth-century Hawaiian-language newspaper articles, mele (songs), and mo‘olelo (histories, stories) about the mō‘ī, Reclaiming Kalākaua restores balance to our understanding of how he was viewed at the time—by his own people and the world. This important work shows that for those who did not have reasons for injuring or trivializing Kalākaua’s reputation as mō‘ī, he often appeared to be the antithesis of our inherited understanding. The mō‘ī struck many, and above all his own people, as an intelligent, eloquent, compassionate, and effective Hawaiian leader.

Available now! XU FUGUAN IN THE CONTEXT OF EAST ASIAN CONFUCIANISMS, find it here: https://buff.ly/2JVXQ22⠀ ⠀ Among twentieth-century Confucians, Xu Fuguan (1904–1982) remains preeminent. This volume, written by Chun-chieh Huang, an authority on Xu’s life and thought, offers English-speaking readers for the first time an exhaustive analysis of the philosopher’s original ideas and research. A distinguished member of the group of Contemporary New Confucians, Xu made a significant contribution to the revival of Chinese culture and society, and the present book outlines the specific features of his legacy in comparison with the views of some of his influential Chinese and Japanese contemporaries.⠀ The topics covered illustrate an overarching idea, namely, the innovative way in which Xu Fuguan answers a major question concerning Chinese culture, one posed by Chinese intellectuals since the May Fourth Movement: how best to approach the modernization of China. Xu’s work is based on the assumption that Confucian thought and ethics—the core of Chinese tradition—can be modernized because “there is nothing in it which is not compatible with the idea of human dignity or rights in modern society.” Xu addresses the question of China’s modernization by offering arguments in favor of building a connection between Confucianism and democracy, mainly its political dimension.

Available now! BUDDHISM AFTER MAO: NEGOTIATIONS, CONTINUITIES, AND REINVENTIONS, find it here: https://buff.ly/2PP42Nl⠀ ⠀ With well over 100 million adherents, Buddhism emerged from near-annihilation during the Cultural Revolution to become the largest religion in China today. Despite this, Buddhism’s rise has received relatively little scholarly attention. The present volume, with contributions by leading scholars in sociology, anthropology, political science, and religious studies, explores the evolution of Chinese Buddhism in the post-Mao period with a depth not seen before in a single study. Chapters critically analyze the effects of state policies on the evolution of Buddhist institutions; the challenge of rebuilding temples under the watchful eye of the state; efforts to rebuild monastic lineages and schools left broken in the aftermath of Mao’s rule; and the development of new lay Buddhist spaces, both at temple sites and online.

Available now! CHINESE PURE LAND BUDDHISM: UNDERSTANDING A TRADITION OF PRACTICE, find it here: https://buff.ly/33fYTkO⠀ ⠀ Chinese Pure Land Buddhism: Understanding a Tradition of Practice is the first book in any western language to provide a comprehensive overview of Chinese Pure Land Buddhism. Even though Pure Land Buddhism was born in China and currently constitutes the dominant form of Buddhist practice there, it has previously received very little attention from western scholars. In this book, Charles B. Jones examines the reasons for the lack of scholarly attention and why the few past treatments of the topic missed many of its distinctive features. He argues that the Chinese Pure Land tradition, with its characteristic promise of rebirth in the Pure Land to even non-elite or undeserving practitioners, should not be viewed from the perspective of the Japanese Pure Land tradition, which differs greatly. More accurately contextualizing Chinese Pure Land Buddhism within the landscape of Chinese Buddhism and the broader global Buddhist tradition, this work celebrates Chinese Pure Land, not as a school or sect, but as a unique and inherently valuable “tradition of practice.”

Available now! METHODS OF DESIRE: LANGUAGE, MORALITY, AND AFFECT IN NEOLIBERAL INDONESIA, find it here: https://buff.ly/33e5BaQ⠀ ⠀ Since the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, Indonesia has undergone a radical program of administrative decentralization and neoliberal reforms. In Methods of Desire, author Aurora Donzelli explores these changes through an innovative perspective—one that locates the production of neoliberalism in novel patterns of language use and new styles of affect display. Building on almost two decades of fieldwork, Donzelli describes how the growing influence of transnational lending agencies is transforming the ways in which people desire and voice their expectations, intentions, and entitlements within the emergent participatory democracy and restructuring of Indonesia’s political economy. She argues that a largely overlooked aspect of the Era Reformasi concerns the transition from a moral regime centered on the expectation that desires should remain hidden to a new emphasis on the public expression of individuals’ aspirations.

Available now! LITERATI LENSES: WENREN LANDSCAPE IN CHINESE CINEMA OF THE MAO ERA, find it here: https://buff.ly/2M0oUyE⠀ ⠀ Chinese cinema has a long history of engagement with China’s art traditions, and literati (wenren) landscape painting has been an enduring source of inspiration. Literati Lenses explores this interplay during the Mao era, a time when cinema, at the forefront of ideological campaigns and purges, was held to strict political guidelines. Through four films—Li Shizhen (1956), Stage Sisters (1964), Early Spring in February (1963), and Legend of Tianyun Mountain (1979)—Mia Liu reveals how landscape offered an alternative text that could operate beyond political constraints and provide a portal for smuggling interesting discourses into the film. While allusions to pictorial traditions associated with a bygone era inevitably took on different meanings in the context of Mao-era cinema, cinematic engagement with literati landscape endowed films with creative and critical space as well as political poignancy. Liu not only identifies how the conventions and aesthetics of traditional literati landscape art were reinvented and mediated on multiple levels in cinema, but also explores how post-1949 Chinese filmmakers configured themselves as modern intellectuals in the spaces forged among the vestiges of the old. In the process, she deepens her analysis, suggesting that landscape be seen as an allegory of human life, a mirror of the age, and a commentary on national affairs.

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